Page 25 of Dirty Pool

Did her father know about the night before?

All the details?

She couldn’t be sure, but she wasn’t going to offer them willingly. As it was, he already worried about her and hovered far too much. She allowed him so much control over her life—although, allowed implied she got some kind of choice—and sometimes, she just wanted to feel normal.

“You know I love you, Gabbie,” her father murmured from the front. “If I don’t look out for you and make sure you stay out of trouble, then nobody will.”

He said things like that a lot.

She figured he did that for himself.

Gabbie couldn’t forget.

“I know, Da.”

“Good. Remember that, lass.”

FIVE

Michel stuffed his hands in his pockets and checked the street for oncoming cars before deciding it was safe to pass. Across the way, a barber shop waited for him to enter. Next to the door, a barber’s pole moved around in slow circles, the white and red lines almost melting together the longer he watched it spin.

Why Sal wanted him to come here, he didn’t know. He’d never been to this business before, not when Sal preferred to meet up for business or with his friends in one of his many restaurants. But this was the address where Sal made it clear Michel would find him—and frankly, it hadn’t been a request.

Okay.

So, he fucked up a little.

Michel still figured it was partly Sal’s fault for not making sure he had someone to fall back on for business here. He wasn’t new to the game—although in New York, there was no such thing as territory lines for him; he could have gone out and dealt anywhere. Nobody would say shit to the son of Dante Marcello.

It was not the same here.

Maybe he forgot.

A foolish mistake, really.

The quiet downtown Detroit street was left behind as Michel entered the barber shop. The first person he found in the old school-styled shop was Sal reclined in the barber’s chair with a towel around his throat, and a black cape tossed over his front. A man much older than him—if the graying of his hair and lines around his face was any indication—wielded a single blade razor a little too close to Sal’s throat.

Michel never understood a man’s desire, but especially not a man in this life, to allow someone to put them in a chair, tilt them back, and give them the power to kill them with one slice. Because that’s literally all it would take. His father once explained to him that it was all about the trust with one’s barber.

It was an experience.

Yeah, whatever.

He’d shave his own fucking face.

He found Sal first, sure, but the other men in the barber shop were obvious, too. The two men sitting in the waiting area, their backs against the wall—never a window—while they watched the Capo getting shaved in the chair. Michel recognized them, too.

Low fucks, really.

Cole Toscano—one of Sal’s few enforcers that he kept close enough for the guy to make a regular appearance whenever Michel was around. And Brock Tocci, who was nothing more than a foot soldier for the Vannozzos.

The two didn’t even pass Michel a look when he entered. Not that it offended or surprised him any because it didn’t. They didn’t have any control over him being that he worked for Sal directly at the moment, and he didn’t have shit to say to them, either.

“Merda,” Sal cussed, finally noticing Michel in the doorway. The Capo’s dark gaze turned on him for a brief second as the razor hovered just below his right ear. Michel thought it was probably the coldest the man had ever looked. He realized then that the friendship he gained with Sal and others really only went as far as Michel’s ability not to cause trouble for them. “Took you long enough to get here, didn’t it?”

“I came straight over,” Michel returned.

Sal scowled, not looking as though he believed that for a second. “Sure, sure. Take a seat, Michel, and we can chat.”